What makes the film so marvelous is how
much primary film footage they were able to use. The multi-week
journal was a press event (funded by William Randolph Hearst) so
most of the passengers on board were journalists. Including at least
two film cameras. Really amazing to see all this vintage aviation,
engineering, and socializing. Another thing that makes the film terrific
is the storytelling, drawing most of its narrative from diaries kept by Lady
Grace Drummond-Hay. She was a journalist with
a fairly sharp eye and pen and her story makes
for a nice structure for the trip. Beware the film is partly
fiction; some of the events depicted (like an unlikely mid-Pacific
repair) did not actually happen.

The story itself is just amazing, the history of airships. The
Graf Zeppelin comes from a parallel Earth, a time when elegant
dirigibles sailed the skies like cruise ships and navy aircraft carriers
were airborne. This actually happened, lovely to see it
play out in a film. The Graf Zeppelin company succeeded in operating a
passenger service for a few years before improving airplane technology
and the looming war made airship success unlikely. Not to mention the
Hindenburg disaster.

There still is a German company operating zeppelins. I flew in the Airship
Ventures craft a couple of years ago in the Bay Area, but sadly that
company didn’t make it.